Captain's Log 18: Grab yer booty, it's time to bite yer coin!

Ahoy Pathfinders!

We’ve hope you’ve had a bountiful weekend! For those of you on our Official Network, we’re currently running a bonus 2x event through until Wednesday with double harvesting, gold, and taming on all our Official Servers! This Captain’s Log wraps up a big week which included our first ever Developer live stream, which we’ll have a link to below, as well as the introduction to our upcoming mega content patch, featuring bounties, player markets and more!

thar she Streams!

Thank you for joining the Seattle Crew for our Livestream! We were thrilled to interact with the community directly in a live environment whilst answering questions you had sent in, sharing an overview of our developmental process, our vision for the game, as well as giving ya a sneak peek at what’s to come!

For those who weren’t able to catch the stream, you can check it out here:

land ahoy for bounties, markets, cosmetics, and more!

Complete Patch Notes

During the live stream, we spoke about three pillars of development: optimization/bug fixes, balance changes, and content. Over the past few weeks since the launch of the title the team have been highly focused on the first two pillars, but now we’re ready to talk about the 3rd: additional content!

In February, we’ll be launching our first major content update which will introduce a number of exciting new gameplay features and mechanics, new areas to explore, creatures, end game balance, fixes and miscellaneous changes.

Here’s what you can look forward to:

V16 - ETA: LATE FEBRUARY

New Features
- Bounty System for PVP: Don't like a particular player or Company? Set a bounty on their heads, then other players can get gold for bringing in the target's head
- Guillotine: hanging your foes in a noose taking too long? Off with their heads!
- Submarine: explore the depths of the ocean in this small scouting submarine. No weapons on board, but it does have claw arms to help harvest the ocean floor and explore (demolish) shipwrecks

- Player shops in freeports. Players can setup automated shops in each freeport, listing loot for sale and naming their own gold coin prices
- New creature: Giant Crab. It can carry heavy loads, along with players, tames and wild creatures

- Tame tokens are available for more mythical creatures, allowing players to have limited-time tames of the Fire Elemental, Rock Elemental, Cyclops, and Gorgon. BONUS: Rock Elemental and Cyclops are rideable!
- New cosmetics: get your pirate on with hook hands and peg leg cosmetics. Yarr!
- New armor cosmetics to customize the look of your Company and crew

- Added a new deep ocean trench environment to explore, with powerful underwater creatures and is the home of the new Giant Crab
- Added a new extensive Polar Dungeon, only accessible by Pathfinders who have all the PowerStones or have defeated the Kraken

Endgame Balance improvements
- Beating the Kraken unlocks a new Feat, which allows players to prevent wild creatures from aggroing on them within range for a period of time
- Beating the Polar Dungeon unlocks a new perfect water breathing Feat, allowing players to remain underwater for a period of time without consuming any oxygen

Updates
- Players can now mount a sail to directly control the sail's open/close amount and rotation settings in a more intuitive way
- AOD AI Ships will now come in multiple size variations with different stats and difficulty levels
- Global territory message updating
- Any dead ships (shipwrecks) from your Company appear with a unique icon on your map now, so you can find the wrecks
- Character creator now has a Height slider to make it easier to set your character's desired height
- Territory map will now display allies as teal-colored
- Reorganized claim flag notifications, so they no longer clutter up the entire HUD when lots of messages are flying by

released patch notes

Over the weeks ahead, we’ll be talking more specifically about some of these features in detail, including the Bounty System for PVP servers and Player Shops in freeports.

Whilst the team have begun working on the content changes, we’ve still had a lot done over the past week in terms of updates, with more on the horizon too! In regards to balance, we gave wolves a thorough overhaul, as well as tweaks to both the Wild and Tamed Dragon plus the Kraken is now easier to defeat after having it’s health sliced and more rewarding, with a brand new passive skill that reduces all Feat cooldowns by 33%!

Additionally, this patch also introduced phase one of our aging process and the Fountain of Youth. Characters aged 90 years and higher will receive a specialist quest which encourages them to visit the Fountain of Youth to reset their characters age back to 20, remove an age debuff, and receive a rejuvenated buff which is a significant permanent statistic boost.

The past week has also included a number of other bug fixes and balance changes as we continue to iterate on and fine tune the live game. You can check out the full list of changes here:

current v15.35

- Fixed an issue with Wild and Tamed Dragon scaling which would have cause it to have incorrect stats.
- Rebalanced base weights for tamed creatures (increase)
v15.33
- Fixed an issue where clients would not correctly see the Rejuvenate buff
- Fixed an issue where players could not tame the Dragon using the token
- Fixed an issue where players may not have been able to feed bola'd creatures due to a desync on servers
v15.21
- Fixed an issue where doors, gateways, and gunports would break on server reload
v15.1
- New "Fountain of Youth" quest will appear for characters aged 90 years and higher. The "Fountain of Youth" (currently represented as a magical particle effect) appears in a single Golden Age Ruins across the ATLAS, near the Power Stone Container. Every 50 in-game days, it teleports to another Golden Age Ruins, on a cycle. If you find the Fountain, and activate it, your character will be set back to age 20, and if you do this when you were aged over 90 years, you'll gain a significant permanent statistics boost (you can do this multiple times to gain further boosts, each time when you're at least 90 years old).
- Characters over age 90 get an old age debuff that slightly reduces stats (shown in char panel)
- Fixed an erroneous feat cooldown time calculation, now all the feat cooldowns are what was originally intended.
- Defeating the Kraken now gives you a unique passive skill which permanently and automatically reduces all of your Feat cooldowns by 33%!
- Summoning the Kraken now only require the first 8 powerstones (Ghostship powerstone is no longer necessary)
- Fixed the bug that was preventing recruiting new Crew in Freeports
- Reduced the total time for unclaiming enemy claimflags, the max is now 4 hours, with 15 minutes when at 100 flags.
- Vultures no longer target low-health wild creature
- Reduced Wolf spawn frequency
- Reduced Wolf natural targeting range
- Reduced Wolf notify neighbor range.
- Reduced Wolf hp and damage
- Fixed land creatures AI's not getting aggro properly if attacked from a a ship
- Stop Allies being able to Capture other Allied territories
- Fixed rapid unclaiming, now if your contested flag is unclaimed it will unclaim at the same rate that it took to claim!
- Improved door ticking performance
- Added cheat DestroyAllNonSaddlePlayerStructures
- Reduced default gold from treasure maps by 50% (as originally intended) and added a new server scaling value for treasure gold. Though, the Official 2x weekend puts the gold back to pre-patch values.
- +50% tame damage resistance
- Shark and Jellyfish targeting/neighbor ranges reduced 30%
- Diving suit adds 90 fortitude now and lasts for 2 hours at surface and about 30 minutes at deepest depths
- Crop plots are now prevented from being placed on ships and are destroyed if they were on ships.
- Ocean creatures can no longer be Alpha.
- Fixed Whale AI to target the ship or player more, rather than the point the player touches the ship.
- Fixed NPC Merchant ship showing as overweight when players carried a lot of weight aboard.
- Fixed Merchant ship showing as Raft with company ID 0 when looking at it.
- Fixed Company ID O showing on none player owned structures on maps (water spouts, etc.)
- Fixed Pillars being build-able on PVE islands.
- Fixed Fog event not appearing for players using low settings.
- Fixed Chicken hurt SFX.
- Added new Large Cannon SFX.
- Fixed Parrot hurt SFX.
- Fixed players not getting aggro when attacking whilst based on a ship.
- Added Streamer stealth mode option.
- Fixed Monkey hurt SFX.
- Fixed a bug causing Map Markers to draw at incorrect locations on the map UI.
- Fixed skill description error, "mythical" changed to "legendary."
- Fixed flotsam items spoiling when reeled in with grappling hook.
- Fixed client crash when transitioning with sextant buff.
- Fixed a Song not referencing the correct song buff.
- Fixed a bug making it so that the Raft could be repaired for free.
- Increased Flame Arrow durability cost to 4 durability consumed per shot.
- Reduced Flame Arrow max percentage damage by 25% (4% health per second to 3% health.)
- Reduced Flame Arrow max damage per second from 10 to 5.
- Reduced Flame Arrow damage to mythical creatures by 75%.
- Reduced Kraken health by 60%.
- Reduced Kraken Minion AoD Ships ship Health 50%.
- Reduced Kraken damage by 50%.
- Reduced Wild Dragon damage by 40%
- Reduced Wild Dragon health be 40%
- Reduced Wild Dragon targeting range by 66%.
- Fixed Dragon not returning to its spawn area.
- Increased Dragon end aggro grace period from 6 second to 9 as it has a tighter aggro range now.
- Fixed Lucky Loader feat ability to not be used whilst prone (as you cannot reload prone.)
- Fixed Cloth Gloves clipping into hands in FPV.
- Fixed Dreadlocks not shrinking correctly with hats.
- Fixed LtOrderSeat collision bug.
- Improved death collision to human corpses.
- Fixed female emotes playing male voices.
- Fixed female player characters using male sleep SFX.
- Added ability to place top hat on certain creatures.
- Fixed Gorgon "Remove Snake" text.
- Corrected Repair box inventory name to read "Ship Resources Box."
- Removed Elephant having weight reduction for Wood, as this was never an intended mechanic and resulted in players being able to get around ship weight restrictions. Accordingly, we'll be re-balancing the base weight of tamed creatures early next week.
- Fixed treasure guards despawning instantly on stasis.
- Fixed Giant snake lock on and player ability to damage it using melee attacks.
- Fixed Monkeys dropping human poop.
- Fixed Client Crash when rendering ocean harvestables.
- Reduced Greek Fire range by 40%.
- Increased Greek Fire crafting costs by adding 6 firegel per ammo.
- Fixed Cow death harvest component giving the same amount of prime as a Bulls.
- Reduced trample damage for all applicable creatures.
- Updated Pig force poop ability to scale with creature level, to incentivise taming higher levels. (45 secs at lvl 1 and 15 secs at lvl 130).
- Reduced Lion grab weight threshold. Prevents unrealistic grabbing of Wolves and Horses.
- Fixed newly tamed creatures being hungry despite being fed during taming.
- Increased Dolphin follow ship range by 33%, and reduced interval by 20%.
- Fixed Bola'ed HUD to better indicate where to feed creature during taming.
- Removed "Giant" prefix from creatures' descriptive name that use it.
- Changed "Giant Snake" descriptive name to "Cobra".
- Fixed incorrect sounds being used by Lion and Tiger animations.
- Fixed incorrect Bear attack ranges to prevent stopping movement for claw attack, which often missed and allowed players to gain distance when being chased.
- Reduced attack and AI ranges for Cave Bear, based on its smaller size.
- Fixed incorrect item weights for cloth, hide and plate armor. They are now heavier.
- Added folder paths for wooden gateways and gates so you no longer see them instantly when opening the Smithy inventory.
- Fixed ability of players to feed through walls of taming pens and not get attacked.
- Prevented some creatures from not being able to be tamed if they are clipped too far into terrain or structures.
- Prevents multi use feeding from the root, putting themselves in harm's way.
- Improved Waking Tame Feeding sockets on Cow and Razortooth.
- Improved bola socket on Crow
- Updated Vulture AI controller to aim lower when targeting corpses.
- Fixed various creature spawn issues.
- Fixed players being able to bola certain alpha creatures (now you cannot.)
- Updated Dolphin to prevent health bars appearing when they follow players.
- Improved torpor animations of Razortooth and Ostrich.
- Increased Ostrich melee swing socket radius to more consistently land attacks. Updated Ostrich IK to prevent leg distortion when running down slopes.
- Reduced max wander height on flyers.
- Improved server list efficiency for a better experience.
- Fixed Greek Fire SFX.
- Fixed player on fire SFX.
- Fixed inability to repair door frames in certain constructions.
- Added some additional server configs:
Game.ini:
[/script/shootergame.shootergamemode]
EnemyBuildPreventionRadiusMultiplier=1 (only applicable if not using claimflags)
bDontUseClaimFlags=false (this will disable claim flags)
bUseStaticCharacterAge=false (this will disable dynamic aging)
TreasureGoldMultiplier=1.0
v14.11
- Remember 'Show Non ATLAS Servers' setting
- No lover overwrites the last connection string
- Grid Number columns are now hidden when displaying non ATLAS servers
v14.1
- Fixed a client side crash that could occur on login
v14
- Launched ATLAS Devkit
11.4
- Fixed multiple exploits which allowed movement of excessively encumbered players through various gameplay mechanics
- Disabled non allied players and creatures basing on anchored or docked ships which can be toggled with a server-setting on PVE servers with the in Game.ini - set bPvEAllowNonAlignedShipBasing=true If you want to allow non allies to be able to be on your ship
- Disabled feats when encumbered
- Melee auto target should no longer pick ally targets in any mode, or player/tame targets in pve
- Disallowed freeport npc crew recruiting if 20 or more level 1 npc crew's for that company on the server

We’ll continue to work on issues as they arise, including tackling ones that are important to you and relentlessly improving our server and client side performance. Additionally, there’ll be an update later this week which should enable BattlEye for Windows Insider builds which should allow those of you using that operating system to rejoin our Official Network.

devkit ho!

Early last Friday morning, we were able to release the first iteration of the ATLAS Devkit. As the game continues to grow overtime, you can expect the Devkit to grow in tandem with additional features, content, and gameplay mechanics for modders to enjoy. We put up an announcement thread which covered a lot of details regarding the kit and how you can get the most out of it, so if you’ve yet to have a read, we’d recommend doing so:

Additionally, our modding Community Manager, ZenRowe, has also been working on with the team on putting together some documentation for the editor which will be updated on a regular basis. Check it out here:

Dynamic atlas maps round-up

The ATLAS Dynamic Maps is a system that monitors live in-game territory ownership and indicates which companies dominate over the lands.

Each week with our Captain’s Log, we’ll be including an image to monitor the progress of the maps, taking note of any exits or new arrivals and any drastic changes in the overall claim.

Those who will come to dominate the ATLAS may very well become clear in the days and weeks ahead, though maintaining a large Empire will likely come with its own longer-term challenges…

The companies that have occupied islands for a certain period of time will soon gain the automatic privilege to name them on the in-game and web maps, as it is their land!

Remember you can don your tribe’s company flag by stylizing it in the game with a paintbrush! Upload your own images or design it how you like, with the top company flags always being visible on https://map.playatlas.com/

The top companies on both PvP Networks have held their positions! Are we already seeing the best companies as players contend for their place in the overall pecking order or will new contenders emerge next week?

And whilst there isn’t active PvP on PVE servers, we’d like to recognize the following tribes for their claims!

Show 'n Tell Showcase #3

We have extended the due date on our current Show ‘n Tell to give you all a little longer to astound us with your creations, be they your fleets, building designs, imaginative tatts, entertaining videos, original fanart or scenic screenshots. Don’t be shy and head to the submission thread for a chance to win some booty in the form of a cash prize!

Alrighty, that ’s it for this log! Thank you so much for becoming a part of our crew and we can't wait to show all you scallywags, landlubbers, captains, and seadogs what lies ahead!

Happy Sailing,

Grapeshot Games

‍For the latest dispatch on #playATLAS keep yer one good eye trained on this here information‍

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Looks great, but really hope they don't add more advanced technology like the submarine (I could see this as a mod but don't think it really fits) Maybe add something like Halley's diving bell or something similar.

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I'm really excited about all of this, especially the submarine. I don't mind more advanced tech as long as its in a Steampunk style of theme.

6 minutes ago, Cpt Al3storm said:

I was looking forward to this "head figures" update but I'm disappointed to be honest. They are too big and showy. The boats are already too fat and not slender at all.

And PLEASE....add jib sails to make head figures useful.

+1 to the jib sails. Also can we please turn the Handling and Weight sails 180 degrees, at the moment they look silly when placed on the front of a ship with the crows nest facing the wrong way and the sail going in the wrong direction.

3

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I am really looking forward for the Player to Player trade. But you make the same mistake as with the FoY. Why the heck do you force player to show up in a few places ? Your servers can't and will never handle the load. Griefers will always try to ruin the fun of others ? Why not let players setup trade-shops in their home-towns ?

Please do not mess it up again as you did (till now - still hoping for a better solution) with the aging mechanics.

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@Jatheish some of the content ideas look fantastic, but when will you get round to looking at the lowlevelfatalerrors which constantly ruin the gameplay for many of the players on both ARK and Atlas. You cannot ignore this issue... its been going on years.

Content is great, and the fixes for some of the issues are great but we really need to see some proper fixes for these HUGE issues.

Thanks

1

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Please start to respond to the problems with the Linux Server code, it's broken and cant be used for a live server, for example, every update requires a server wipe. We feel like we are being ignored as update after update is released and none of the mare in a working state

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Hello, I am asking for help when server problems have occurred, I had huge problems, my game was blocked and campaign with ID No. 1763453669 removed. Currently, I have a new campaign with the same name but new ID 1035950355. Please urgently for help because in one days everything will be destroyed and I worked hard. Thank you and best regards.

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come and reply to the oh so many topics about issues while u keep pushing updates nobody asks for, you are losing players by the thousands now daily, u gonna quit this project like you guys abandoned most of them and let mods deal with your crapcode? Better start acting like a man or I will come and find you in your shitty London.

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Enough new content, let's try and fix all of the current content that remains broken! We don't need guillotines and new armor skin...we need working skill trees and the Fountain of Youth to be properly implemented.